III
Marie Bashkirtseff was not born an artist, with that stern predestination with which nature determines the career of persons with one talent. If her voice had not been destroyed during its development, she would in all probability have become one of those great singers whose charm lies not only in the outward voice, but in the indescribable fascination of a deep, strong individuality. Her journal, especially the first part, reveals an authoress with a rare psychological intuition, an understanding of human nature, a deep sympathy, a mastery of expression, and an early-matured genius, which are unsurpassed even among Russians, well known for the richness of their temperament. If this young woman, whose short life was consumed by a craving for love, had gained the experience she so greatly desired, where would the woman be found who could have borne comparison with her? Who like her was created to receive the knowledge whereby a woman is first revealed to herself, and is developed into the being who is earth’s ruler,—the great mother, on whose lap man reposes, and from whence he goes forth into the world? All that she had was original; it was all of the best material that the earth has to give; and therein lay the mystery of her downfall.
The backbone of her nature was that indomitable pride whereby a great character reveals the consciousness of its own importance. The lioness cannot wed with the house-dog. The same instinct which, in animals, marks the boundary line between the different species, determines in a still higher degree—higher far than the materialistic wisdom of our schools will allow—the attractions and antipathies of love. The iron law which compels healthy natures to preserve their distinction, prevented this girl from sinking to the level of the men of her own class, amongst whom she might have found some to love her. She tried it more than once, but it did not answer. Her exceptionable nature required a husband superior to herself. One or two such men might be found nowadays, who not only as productive minds, but also in the subtle charm of their manly characters, would have been the born masters of an enchantress such as Marie Bashkirtseff. But these men are not to be met with in the drawing-rooms and studios of Paris, nor yet in the Bois de Boulogne; not in St. Petersburg either, nor on the family estates of Little Russia, and she never got to know them.
This woman, who was born to become a great singer, a great painter, a great writer, born—before all else—to be loved with a great love, never learned to know love, and died without being great in any way, because she was enchained all her life long to that which was greater than all her possibilities,—a young girl’s infinite ignorance.
In spite of all the knowledge that she had acquired, in spite of all the probings of her sensitive nerves and sharp intellect, she remained always and in everything incomplete. It is one of the results of the incompleteness of which unmarried women are the victims, that they seek everywhere the complete, the perfected in man,—i.e., they seek for that which is only to be found in men who are growing old, and have nothing more to give; in whom there are no slumbering ambitions, and no hidden aspirations. She must have passed by, unheeding, many a young genius, who perhaps went to an inferior woman to satisfy the passion which might have proved to both of them an endless source of blessedness, health, and regeneration. She must have felt many a look rest upon her, arousing sensations which, to her white soul, were a mystery. For this girl, who had drunk deeply of the literature of her time, and who knew theoretically everything that there was to know, was yet unspoiled by a single trace of premature knowledge. The pages of her journal are innocent from beginning to end,—an innocence that is stupid while it is touchingly intact. Marie Bashkirtseff’s journal is not merely a contribution to the psychology of girls, it is a young girl’s psychology in the widest, most typical sense,—the psychology of the unmarried state, bequeathed by one who is ignorant to those who know, as her only memorial upon earth, but a memorial that will last longer than marble or bronze. She died young, but she had no wish to die. She took twelve years to write this book, and she wrote it on her travels, in the midst of her pleasures, in the midst of her work, in the despair of her loneliness, and in her fear when she shrank from death; she wrote it during sleepless nights, and on days passed in blessed abstraction in the beauties of nature. She always addressed the unknown hearers who were ever present to her imagination; she spoke to them so that, in case she should die young, she might live upon earth in the memory of the strangers who happened to read her journal. A “human document,” by a young girl, she thought, must be of sufficient interest not to be forgotten, and she promises to tell us everything connected with her little person. “All, all,—not only all her thoughts, but she will not even hide what is laughable and disadvantageous to herself; for what would be the object of a book like this, unless it told the truth absolutely, accurately, and without concealment?”
The confessions are by no means a human document in the sense that her three patron saints—Zola, Maupassant, and Goncourt—would have used the word. They do not contain a single naked reality. They are modest, not only with the modesty of a child of nature, but with the modesty of a young hot-house beauty, a delicate lady of fashion, beneath whose snow-white resplendent dress—the work of a Parisian dressmaker—are concealed the bleeding wounds and the pitiless signs of death. But she lets us follow her from the rich beginnings of her youth onwards, until the stream of life trickles away drop by drop, leading us on to the weary resignation of her last days.
This exhaustion begins to show itself immediately after the two years of reckless overwork and study in Julian’s studio; but the cause of it was mental rather than physical. Julian’s last words were: “You have learned all that it is possible to teach—the rest depends upon yourself.” And Robert-Fleury, the principal academical professor, nodded his approval. After that they left her. But where was she to begin? Where was the rest to come from? What was she to do—she, who had been such a phenomenal pupil? How was she to obtain sufficient individuality for original production? Learn! yes, of course. A girl can do that better than the most painstaking young man of the faculty. There is nothing to prevent it; her sex will slumber as long as the brain is kept at work. But artistic production is another matter. Whence should it come? Not from herself, for she has nothing; she has had no experience. She can represent what she has seen, or she can imagine, but that is all. Marie’s nature was too truthful to be satisfied with imitation. The old academical art did not appeal to her, as was very natural, and the new was just bursting its shell, and contained all the impurity and rubbish that belongs to a state of transition. The imperfect in her desired the perfect; she who was an incomplete woman felt the need of a perfected man.
She made no progress. She painted at home from models, and she went out driving with her maid, accompanied by some young Russian friends, and sketched street scenes from the carriage. So great was her need for ideas that she attempted pictures on religious and historical subjects, and with some difficulty she finished a picture for the next Salon,—went half mad with empty pride, but had to admit that it was very much inferior to the former one which she had painted under Julian’s supervision. For two years she meets with no success. Her pictures contain nothing that is characteristic; she has no individual style, no personal experiences, and no original ideas. But her individuality, though dormant, is too strong to allow her to imitate the style of other lady artists, one half of whom are too amateurish, and their painting too devoid of character, to content her, while the others have betrayed their sex, and adopted a severe, masculine style.
At last the day came when Bastien Lepage was a public celebrity. Marie Bashkirtseff saw his pictures, became his pupil, worshipped him, and ever after sang his praises.
Yet, in all this, there was something lacking.
His bright coloring, and the atmosphere of his landscapes, with their pale, sultry heat, the aggressive physical character of his people, etc.,—all these points appealed strongly to her South-Russian nature. He set free her national feelings, which had hitherto been bound and suppressed beneath academical influences, and she discovered a kindred spirit in him, a primitive element at the root of his being, which made her tenderly disposed towards him. But she had no intention of remaining his pupil. She was too deeply conscious of the difference between them, and saw clearly that his influence was not likely to be more than a passing phase.
She worshipped him from a long-suppressed desire to worship some one, but her worship was calm and passionless. This little Bastien Lepage was not the man to arouse her deepest affections; he was too bourgeois, and his fine art was too tame.
And yet she praised him, half mechanically. Saint Marceaux, the sculptor, had appealed to her feelings more deeply than he had done.
There was a reason for it. There was a strong tie between these two beings, who seemed only destined to exert a passing influence over one another.
They were both ill when they made each other’s acquaintance: life, with its deceptive pleasures, had ruined the health of Bastien Lepage; and Marie Bashkirtseff was ill from want of life,—her youth, her beauty, her vitality, had all been wasted.
It is the usual fate of the cultured young people of our time: he comes to her ruined, because he has satiated his thirst; she comes to him ruined, because her thirst has never been satisfied.
They are as far apart as two separate worlds, and they do not understand one another.
The development of the last few years, through which Marie Bashkirtseff had passed before she met Bastien Lepage, had brought her and the readers of her journal nothing but pain and dulness.
What with ambitious plans for artistic work, and the life with her family,—which resembled a convent more than anything else, interrupted by occasional smart dinners, balls, and various projects of worldly marriages, which came to nothing,—Marie Bashkirtseff had become superficial and almost stupid. Her genius appeared to have flown, and a sickly, blasée hot-house plant, solely occupied with herself, was all that remained of her. She was like the ordinary girl of good family, who has grown rather disagreeable, and is no longer quite young, who is still ignorant of most things, and becomes extremely tiresome by chattering on subjects which she does not understand. All this is changed after her meeting with Bastien Lepage.
She regains her youth in a wonderful way; she becomes shy and easily bewildered. When he pays his first visit she gets quite confused, turns back three times before entering the drawing-room, and cannot think of anything to say after they have shaken hands. But he, with his unaffected manner, and little insignificant person, soon succeeds in putting her at her ease. The long tirades in her journal come to an end at last, and are followed by short, cautious, but very expressive sentences.
Bastien Lepage is anything but a lover. His manner is straightforward and simple, and he holds himself strikingly aloof, maybe for want of practice in the art of love-making, or perhaps out of sheer weariness.
When he leaves her, she becomes as vain and egotistical as before; but when he is there she watches his every movement with a still, calm joy.
She had been ill for several years. One lung was affected, and now the other followed suit; she also suffered from deafness, and that troubled her more than anything else. She had never given a thought to her health.
When Bastien is there, all is well. She is always able to hear what he says, and in his eyes she is always pretty; her art takes a new turn, and inspired by him she becomes original. The result is the picture in the Luxembourg, called “A Meeting,” besides several very good portraits. There is no question of love between them; he is never anything but the artist, and her old coquettish manner vanishes. She has a peculiarly tender affection for him, and the development from a self-centred girl to a full-grown woman is accomplished within her.
He suddenly becomes violently and hopelessly ill. He is seized with violent pains, followed by the cramp, and his legs are paralyzed.
The green bud of her love withers without ever having blossomed. But as his illness grows worse, his longing to have Marie always beside him increases. When he is sufficiently free from pain to go out driving, he gets his brother to carry him up to her; and at other times she comes with her mother to visit him. It is quite a little idyl. His mother, a worthy woman of the working-class, cooks his soup; while her mother, who is a smart lady, cuts his hair, which has grown too long, and his brother, the architect, crops his beard. After their united efforts he looks as handsome as ever, and no longer so ill. Then Marie must sit by his bedside, while he turns his back upon the others and looks only at her,—and speaks of art.
It is September, 1884. Marie coughs and coughs. Bastien is getting worse and worse, and he cannot bear her to leave him, even while he is undergoing his worst paroxysms of pain. On the 1st of October she writes in her journal:
“Tant de dégoût et tant de tristesse!
“What is the use of writing?
“Bastien Lepage is getting worse and worse.
“And I cannot work.
“My picture will not be finished.
“Alas! Alas!
“He is dying and suffers a great deal. When one is with him, one seems to have left the world behind. He is already beyond our reach, and there are days when the same feeling comes over me. I see people, they talk, and I answer; but I seem to be no longer on the earth,—a quiet indifference, not painful, almost like an opium dream. And he is dying! I go there more from habit than anything else; he is a shadow of his former self, and I, too, am scarcely more than a shadow; what is the good of it all?
“He is hardly conscious of my presence now; there is little use in going; I have not the power to enliven him. He is contented to see me, and that is all.
“Yes, he is dying, and it is all the same to me; I do not take myself to account for it; it is something that cannot be helped.
“Besides, what difference does it make?
“All is over.
“In 1885 they will bury me.”
In that she was mistaken, for she died the same month. Until the last few days Bastien Lepage had himself carried up to her; and she, shaken by the fever of the last stage of consumption, had her bed moved into the drawing-room, where she could receive him. There, by her bedside, as she had formerly sat beside his, with his legs resting upon a cushion, he remained until the evening. They scarcely spoke; they were together, and that was all they cared for. And she, who ever since her first awakening consciousness had yearned so passionately and so impatiently for permission to live her life, died now, silent, resigned, without a murmur; and knowing that the end was near, she was great in death, since she had not succeeded in being great in her short life.